


I've Heard that Song Before

by Shazrolane



Series: We'll Meet Again [3]
Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Battle, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes at War, Bucky Barnes-centric, Gen, M/M, POV Bucky Barnes, Sergeant Barnes of the 107th
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-06-28
Packaged: 2018-04-06 13:50:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4224063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shazrolane/pseuds/Shazrolane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Almost nothing is louder than your own heartbeat in the dark, keeping time with the rasp of your breathing. And every beat is one more moment of life; one more moment closer to when you can go home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I've Heard that Song Before

**Author's Note:**

> [I’ve Heard That Song Before](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX5S9iXmMek)  
>  Harry James and his Orchestra with Helen Forest, 1942
> 
>  
> 
> I did not use the Graphic Depictions of Violence tag because I don't feel anything qualifies as graphic, but please mind your own personal comfort levels. This is a war story.
> 
> Note: I have absolutely no real combat experience; I've researched and read accounts written by veterans, but all mistakes here are my own and everything I've written is my own interpretation of my research. I have nothing but the greatest respect for anyone who has ever served, and my very last intention is to offend anyone. If I have offended anyone, please contact me and I will work to make it right.

No one ever tells you how _loud_ battle is. How the constant staccato of rifle fire and the booms and explosions and screams eventually all blend together in one horrifying din. How you don’t even hear them, really. 'Cause if you do you’ll just clap your hands over your ears and curl up in a ball until someone shoots you. How, out of the background noise, you can sometimes hear one thing: a ricochet or a guy cursing or sometimes crying out, but most of the time it’s one big carpet of sound that goes on and on until you want to scream from it. When you do, you can’t even hear your own voice, sometimes.

You’ve got to learn which voices to listen to and which ones to ignore. The crying you ignore. It happens to everyone; the best you can do is give the guy his privacy, ‘cause you know he’ll do the same for you when it’s your heart breaking and it feels like every last good thing on this Earth is gone.

You ignore the voice in your head too—the one telling you to stay put, to fuck your orders and just run. 'Cause the only things you’ve got out here are your reputation and the guys you depend on. No one wants to die—well maybe some of them do, but mostly those guys manage it pretty quick—no one wants to die but it’s better than letting your boys down. Better than disgracing yourself and having to live with that for the rest of your life. So you ignore that voice, even when your hands are sweaty and your whole body is shaking and you’re more scared than you’ve ever been in your whole damn life. You swallow down the bile and you push on.

No one ever tells you how loud silence can be, or what it sounds like when things are falling to earth and you hope the wetness is more rain. How long the pauses between breaths can be when you’re waiting to see if it’s really over or if this is just the quiet before another explosion.

No one ever tells you how loud the ringing in your ears gets, when everything’s over. When the big guns go silent and rifles are slung across your backs and you’re stumbling along trying to find where you belong, because your squad is all you’ve got left in this world and safety consists of those four men. How you make sure to walk slowly as you try to find them, because if you start running you won’t stop. And because you know there’s always the chance you’ll find an empty space where one of them used to be.

When you make it back, no one says anything 'cause no one has to. You line up for chow being served out of a box and you don’t need to talk for that. You know everyone is grumbling about the awful K rations because that’s what all of you do all the time, so it’s comfortable and familiar and you don’t need to hear it because you’re saying the same thing. And you know that no matter what the words are, what it really means is, “I’m so fucking glad you’re all here.”

No one ever tells you how quiet it gets at night, when your ears finally stop ringing and the guys are too tired to bitch and complain and everyone’s trying to sleep. You and your buddy dug a temporary trench, a hole just long enough for you both to lay down in, facing opposite directions so you have a 360 degree field of view. You cover his back, he covers yours, and you miss Steve more than anything because there’s a body touching yours, but it isn’t the right one. 

No ever tells you how you can get so used to a sound that you don’t even notice it, until it’s not there anymore. Back home, it was cars in the street outside your apartment; Steve’s breath wheezing in and out. Here, it’s the crickets. The insects are so loud, louder than the cars and trucks used to be back in the city. They used to keep you up at night, drove you crazy with the constant droning. But now it makes you feel safe, because crickets don’t chirp when there’s something moving near them. You know better than to feel too safe, because even crickets can be fooled if someone moves slowly enough—you've done it yourself: crawling through the mud on your belly like a worm so you can set up above the enemy's camp. So you sleep lightly. And when the crickets go silent, it wakes you faster than any bugle call ever did.

Almost nothing is louder than your own heartbeat in the dark, keeping time with the rasp of your breathing. And every beat is one more moment of life; one more moment closer to when you can go home.

(Nothing is louder than the voice in your head that says you're not going to make it, but you've heard that one so long you don't pay attention anymore. Because you've known since before you shipped out that you were never coming home.)

**Author's Note:**

> Note: This fills the “Loss of Hearing” square in my bingo card.
> 
>  Curious about [K-rations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-ration)?
> 
> Come visit me on [tumblr!](http://shazrolane.tumblr.com/)


End file.
